Authors' objectives:

The evidence review was conducted to address six key questions mandated in the Task Order: (1) What are the factors that contribute to violence and associated adverse health outcomes in childhood and adolescence? (2) What are the patterns of co-occurrence of these factors? (3) What evidence exists on the safety and effectiveness of interventions for violence? (4) Where evidence of safety and effectiveness exists, are there other outcomes beyond reducing violence? If so, what is known about effectiveness by age, sex, and race/ethnicity? (5) What are commonalties of the interventions that are effective and those that are ineffective? (6) What are the priorities for future research?

Authors' results and conclusions: Across all studies, only one risk factor, male gender, was consistently reported to be significantly associated with youth violence perpetration. Low family socioeconomic status (SES) was consistently reported not to be an independent risk factor associated with youth violence. Co-occurrence of family SES with other risk factors could be associated with youth violence. Reported significance and non-significance showed very little consistency for all other risk factors. Moreover, few studies examined a comparable set of risk factors (i.e., risk factors were often examined only by a single study) limiting our ability to make conclusions based on the available evidence. Among studies that specifically focused on adolescent males, we identified a consistent significant association between violence and anger, cigarette smoking, and non-violent delinquency. For adolescent females, we identified a consistent significant association between violence and non-violent delinquency. For research conducted with at-risk youth populations, we found a consistent significant association between being Latino and repeat physical aggression among adolescent males; no consistency was observed for the findings of research conducted with at-risk adolescent females. With respect to the review of the effectiveness of prevention interventions, the number of studies was too smal for the detection of any systematic differences among programs with different characteristics.

Authors' recommendations: We found little agreement with respect to the definitions used to measure youth violence and ways in which risk/protective factors are conceptualized, operationally defined, measured, analyzed, and reported, despite the severe restrictions that limited the number and quality of studies reviewed. As a result, little consistency was observed in findings across individual studies and the literature does not appear to be growing in a cumulative nature. We recommend that researchers nationwide initiate efforts to develop comparable approaches to defining, measuring, analyzing, and publishing research data related to youth violence, and that new initiatives be funded to facilitate the collection of comparable data across multiple sites and with multiple youth populations. Furthermore, we recommend that future research consider the use of an 'individual-level-data-meta-analysis' method to identify sequential and simultaneous co-occurrences of contributing factors to youth violence. We recommend that social scientists studying youth violence increase the rigor of their research, including the use of control populations and extended follow-up to evaluate the sustained effectiveness of youth violence prevention interventions.

Authors' methods: Systematic review

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/tp/adolvitp.htm

Year Published: 2004

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: United States

Organisation Name: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Contact Address: Center for Outcomes and Evidence Technology Assessment Program, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. Tel: +1 301 427 1610; Fax: +1 301 427 1639;

Contact Name: martin.erlichman@ahrq.hhs.gov

Contact Email: martin.erlichman@ahrq.hhs.gov

Copyright: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)